Scrim-mage
IM: The reason I made that show with scrim, and I’m not gonna lie to you, it’s because the woman that I dressed, I always made her the smartest and most politically correct woman; there was nothing really bad about [my] woman. It was a little after grunge, [but] it was still that sort of heroin thing, and it was, it was rampant, and that’s all anybody wanted to look at were those bad girls, you know, like skinny, skinny, skinny girls with like white, white complexions—no Black people I mean, really, it was this crazy thing, and I just could not find it in my life to even glorify such a thing, I couldn’t.
So I felt like, “Okay, I’m showing these beautiful women in these bodacious clothes, I have to somehow pull her down. I have to show her in this crazy vulnerable way.’” And I said, “If [the audience] could see her the way I see her in the fitting room, putting her clothes on, it would break it all down and it would make it alright for these girls to be like, good, as opposed to evil.” And so I thought of the scrim idea. I thought the only thing that can save me with these people who were all just way too cool for school, who are looking for these bad girls, is to do this thing where I just show them undressed, you know, and that will get their attention. So that’s the nascence of the idea, and I stuck to it and I made that happen, you know?
I remember another reason was because I felt I had to do something to set myself apart from all the other designers showing at the [Bryant Park] tents. That was the beginning of the tent thing; it was season six or something, and I would never, never partake. I would always be like, “This is not what fashion is about to me: It’s about individualism. I don’t want to show on the same runway. I think it’s unfair that these people can book the same people that I’m booking; I want my own models.” You had like 25 models, [and] every single one of them did every single show, so you have to set yourself apart. And I remember Anna [Wintour] called me going, “No, you really have to show in the tent.” And I was like, “I do? Okay.” So I committed to the tent, and I was like, “Now, what the fuck do I do?” And so that was a big part of that too, was trying to keep it separate.
